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Saturday, March 5, 2011

China puts more restrictions on foreign journalists

Jasmine revolution in Arab countries has caused the crash of the Chinese authorities with accredited foreign media in China. Beijing has decided to regulate the more rigidly the free movement of journalists. More than a dozen reporters have been warned that they will withdraw their approval if they continue to cover the protests of jasmine, convened by the Internet every Sunday since Feb.

20. The Chinese government yesterday defended the application of more stringent restrictions for foreign journalists working in the country. This decision comes after several journalists were physically attacked on Sunday by police when they went to the central street of Peking Wanfujing to cover a possible protest called by the Internet.

A quote whose success or failure is difficult to measure, because Wangfujing is full of people who go shopping on Sunday afternoon. However, it appears that the call had a very mitigated success. The clash between security forces and representatives of the press came when the former tried to prevent the media did record pictures or photographs of the site.

Security forces want to avoid at all costs crowd protesting images and that the example of the riots in the Arab world to move to China. As a result of these riots last Sunday, from earlier this week police have summoned individually to more than a dozen journalists at the premises of the Public Security Bureau to warn them that they have broken the law.

They have been reminded that they need permission from local authorities before making any coverage and that if they go back to these calls on Sunday they risk being punished. You can see your press card removed, which is the automatic cancellation of his visa and residence permit. The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, denied yesterday that it would mean a legal change and a step backwards with respect to the regulation issued in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics.

He said that the only thing that has happened is that "local authorities have given detailed guidelines to implement the rules." The new directive provides that the foreign press first asked local authorities if you need any special permission before reporting an issue. The decision depends on each situation and "the assessment of local police," added Jiang.

Until now, journalists need only the consent of respondents, except in sensitive areas such as Tibet or Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Moreover, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed the media for causing the trouble with the police on Sunday. "Many journalists did not go there [to the Wangfujing Street] to inform, broke the law and affected the social order not to illegally gather information but to create information." Jiang Yu said then that "if they follow the laws and develop a real journalism will not have problems, but if someone tries to be a hero, using the law as a shield and create news, no legislation is going to protect." The hardening of the treatment given to foreign media in recent days has provoked concern and protests from the embassies of the European Union and twenty-seven member countries and the United States, and marks a point of maximum tension in the relationship between representatives of the foreign press and the Chinese authorities in recent years.